Thursday, January 20, 2011

Taking the Huntley Power Station offline

We've been informed that the Huntly Power Station is now only running one of it's six turbines. 

The reason for this is that like all Power Stations Huntly heats water into steam and uses this to turn turbines.  The heated water at Huntly is then discharged into the river. 
This is why you'll find power stations along rivers. 

However due to the summer temperatures the hot water got even hotter. 

This is fantastic news if you live in Huntly and like to swim.  It's less good news when you consider that fish started floating to the top of the river and algae started growing. 

So five of the turbines were taken offline. 

This story again illustrates that due to the very small New Zealand economy very small changes can have large changes in our electricity industry. 

Of course this sends the price of electricity up, and hopefully this cost will be worn by Genesis Energy.  Hopefully it won't just increase it's electricity charges.

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